


Dance Softly Through

by Lady_Katana4544



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Secret Relationship, Small hidden moments, Star Wars Rare Pairs Exchange 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-01 09:30:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12702096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Katana4544/pseuds/Lady_Katana4544





	Dance Softly Through

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AriesOnMars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AriesOnMars/gifts).



The bridge floor is freezing where she and Ahsoka are sitting as the medical ship heads towards the chosen destination, trying to keep each other warm. She’s still reeling from the parasite in her mind and confused about her feelings towards Ahsoka. Barriss hasn’t known the other Padawan long, but she wants to get to know Ahsoka more if they ever have a chance.

She doesn’t have many friends among her peers, but Ahsoka represents something wildly different and… that calls to a side of Barriss that she has repressed through her time with the Jedi Order.

Dimly Barriss wonders if she imagines the feeling of cold chapped lips pressing lightly against her temple before darkness claims all consciousness.

She comes to later in a mental daze of pain and confusion before slowly pushing that aside. There is only the silence of her own mind coupled with the quiet music of the Force within her head where there had only be the twisted hissing, mocking tones of the parasite worm.

Barriss casts her senses away and outward from her inner self -- the mess left behind in her mind from the parasite is something that she tells herself will be dealt with later -- and freezes up when she senses the warmth of a body next to her. At least she is stiff until the Force helpfully informs her that the extra body is her new friend, Ahsoka Tano.

Though why Ahsoka is sharing a bed with her is beyond comprehension in Barriss’s tired mind and she settles for quietly watching her new friend sleep beside her. As she considers the dark lines under Ahsoka’s closed eyes, she hopes that no one will come disturb them so that her friend can get some uninterrupted sleep cycles before they forced back into their duties as servants and unwitting military leaders of the Galactic Republic.

Force help her, but she thinks that given time she might be able to consider Ahsoka Tano as a friend among the other Jedi.

0

A door slides open softly followed by the sound of multiple feet moving across the floor and soft breathless giggling before the door slides shut again. Not a second after both occupants can hear the roar of a crowd rushing by as they keep chasing a lost quarry of two down the street. In the dim light, wide blue eyes meet the somewhat calm gaze of her companion in what seems like hours of breathless silence before it is broken by breathless giggles.

“How long do you think we can wait before we are forgotten by the villagers or our Masters send out search parties for us? Or both?” Ahsoka asks between breathless giggles.

“I don’t know. I can only imagine how disappointed my own Master will be when she finds out that we managed to accidentally offend an entire village. Just with our familiarity and general closeness to each other in their public market.” Barriss answers softly as she sits down slowly on the one bed that she can see in the dim lighting of the room.

She quietly relishes the musical sound of Ahsoka’s laughter and basks in the warm brightness of her Force presence as her friend settles down beside her on the bed before Ahsoka rests her head on Barriss’s shoulder. Barriss stiffens up before slowly she relaxes as her friend makes a sleepy sound and Barriss finds herself hoping that the moment never ends.

The beeping of their comms soon breaks the silence and Barriss sighs softly as Ahsoka wakes up with an annoyed sound. Barriss opens her mouth to say something when Ahsoka kisses her left cheek.

“Guess we have to go back now.”

“Indeed.”

Her cheek tingles for days after that and her troopers gently tease Barriss when she happens to blush at any mention of Ahsoka in their presence. 

0

There’s a bruise on Ahsoka’s cheek.

Barriss can see it slowly darkening in the dim lighting of the briefing room as she narrows her eyes and tries to keep herself from walking over to Ahsoka and interrupting her quiet though somewhat heated conversation with Clone Captain Rex. 

There is a bruise on the cheek of one of her dearest friends and someone was dumb enough to put it there.

An odd urge to take Ahsoka away from the room and take her friend to someplace more protected rises within her so strongly and do harm to those who would dare to hurt Ahsoka. The urge is so strong that makes her nearly see vision so red that it a gentle prodding from her Master to make Barris reign in her temper and the protective urges. She takes a deep breath to find her center of calm and breathes out a sigh slowly before silently thanking her Master.

It is not the Jedi way to wish to harm other beings. Even to ones that hurt her friends.

But there is something that she can do for the bruise on her dear friend’s cheek because part of her training under Master Unduli is healing with the Force and she leaves her Master’s side to do it. Ahsoka and Clone Captain Rex look up at her approach and she tries not to be jealous of their closeness. She knows that it has nothing to do with her, but since it appears that their quiet discussion was about Ahsoka, Barriss still wants to know what they are talking about it. Every little detail of it.

Ahsoka smiles wanly at her - such a small thing that melts part of the growing coldness in her heart - and the Captain nods at her calmly, his dark, glittering eyes assessing - does he ever stop assessing everything around them? - what her intentions might be in that moment even behind supposedly peaceful lines. Ahsoka is lucky to have such an attentive Clone Officer and friend at her side.

“Hey Barriss.”

“Commander Offee.”

She nods at him with a slight smile.

“Hello Commander Tano, Captain Rex. Pardon my interruption in your discussion.”

Rex shakes his head with a small smile in his voice as Ahsoka makes a small sound of protest which is no doubt at her need to formal in front of others when they are in public.

“No need to apologize, Commander Offee. It wasn’t so much a discussion as much as it was my attempt at getting the Commander here to see a healer for what is surely shaping up to be a nasty bruise later. There’s only so much I can do to hold the boys back from leaving the ranks to go find the unlucky target who hit their Commander.”

Not if she could help it. Not if she were to leave the ranks and find the idiot first. The bile in her stomach rolls around heavily and she can almost taste it in her mouth before she’s stamping her protective urges back deeply behind her mental shields and away from the training bond Barriss shares with her Master.

From the look in Captain Rex, something whispers in her mind that the Captain knows what happened yet he hasn’t done anything. Perhaps Ahsoka has asked him not too. Swearing him to keep silence on the matter.

Ahsoka shakes her head, the Padawan beads in her headdress clinking softly against each other. Barriss can sense the rolling waves of her friend’s calm amusement before Ahsoka looks at her with a grin.

“The boys. Always so protective of their Jedi.”

“Indeed.”

Ahsoka blinks at the coolness in her voice and Rex straightens in his shoulders, a protective soul quietly acknowledging the writhing protectiveness of another being. She watches as Ahsoka looks at her for a few moments in silence while chewing on her lower lip before she looks at the man beside them.

“You know I think I might go see a healer actually, Rex.”

Barriss watches as surprise and concern flicker briefly through a crack in the calm mask of Rex’s face that seemingly melts away before her eyes as he looks at Ahsoka before nodding slightly.

“Very good, Commander. I can get Kix or Coric to -” He says before falling silently when Ahsoka shakes her head.

“No need to bother them or any of the others from their rest.” Ahsoka says calmly before looking to Barriss who tries to calm the swift beating of her heart. “Barriss can see to see the bruise if it is alright with her.”

“Only if my Master allows it.” Barriss answers with a glance towards her Master and watches Luminara inclines her head slightly as Anakin Skywalker silently watches the exchange from beside her.

“Go on. It will be good for you to have more practice, Padawan.”

“Of course, Master.”

She bows slightly to Luminara before she feels Ahsoka gently take a hold of her wrist and leads Barriss from the briefing room as the discussion turns back to planning new movements against the enemy. It is something that she should really pay attention too, but she is putting her own need to take care of Ahsoka first before needs of the galaxy as a whole.

The Jedi Code teaches one to not be selfish and have selfish desires that go before the needs of the many. A teaching that she seems to be failing at as of late with the war raging around them.  


The sound of a door sliding open brings Barriss out of her musings to watch silently as Ahsoka turns the lights of her quarters on and goes in search of her medikit while Barriss takes in the blankness of the room around her. It’s almost familiar enough to remind her of the small room she has at the Jedi Temple and her nose wrinkles slightly at the thought of how much dust must be gathering on her prayer stones.

“Barriss.”

If asked later, Barriss will deny to her dying day that she startled at the gentle, inquiring sound of her name on Ahsoka’s lips. She turns to her left and watches as Ahsoka comes up to her with a small medikit in her hands. Setting the medikit down on the table, Ahsoka takes her hand and frowns slightly at it before looking back at her.

“You’re practically shaking. Why is that, Barriss?”

Air hisses out of her mouth slowly as Barriss gently removes her hand from Ahsoka’s grasp while ignoring her friend’s question and she reaches for the medikit, opening to see the contents inside it then back to consider the bruise on Ahsoka’s cheek with critical eyes. It will probably hurt tomorrow with some swelling as well.

“I know that you won’t give me details on how you got it, but I’d rather like to tend to that bruise now. The area looks to be starting to swell.”

“Alright.”

Relieved that Ahsoka will allow her this, Barriss hums an old Creche tune softly under her breath as she uses the meager supplies of the medikit and her healing skills in the Force. After a few moments, she feels Ahsoka poking her mental barriers and allows her friend to slide past them. Allows her to understand just what Barriss is feeling at the moment before Ahsoka pulls back slightly and watches her silently before speaking.

“You can’t protect me from everything, Barriss.”

“Won’t stop me from trying to do just that.”

Ahsoka takes her hand - the one tending to her bruised cheek - and gently presses her lips to the pulse point of Barriss’s wrist; she tries to hold back a shiver at the feeling of those lips against her cool skin.

“Thank you for caring, Barriss.”

“Always.”

The uncovered skin on the top of her hand tingles along with the pulse point at her wrist from Ahsoka’s touch.

0

From her prison cell, Barriss feels the sweeping cold of the Dark Side surround her as the Force screams violently with the death of the Jedi -- some of whom she had been friends with at one time -- across the galaxy and those who remained at the Temple on Coruscant. In the tattered remains of her Padawan bond with Master Unduli and Barriss senses distantly that the other Mirilan is still alive. For the moment and where exactly she does not know.

With her betrayal to the fallen Republic, the Jedi, and her former Master, Barriss doesn’t allow herself to think about any of them in more familiar terms; she’s lost that right. 

If any of them spared a thought for her, Barriss does not doubt that they would see her only as a Fallen Jedi. Perhaps even as a Darksider touched by the Dark Side of the Force. No, she wouldn’t be thought of fondly at all.

 

In the months following the mass destruction of the Jedi Order and the rise of the new Empire that she has heard the barest whispers about through the door of her cell, Barriss allows herself to think of Ahsoka for the first time in a long while and hopes that her friend - once secret lover - survived the decimation of the Jedi.

In her mind, Barriss thinks that she should maybe be upset that in the chaos of reformation that everyone including the prison guards has long forgotten about her. Forgotten that she had been placed in the darkest cell available to wait for further judgments without the Jedi watching. A darker part of her mind almost reminiscent of the parasite worms combined with the voices of others that she has known in her life whispers quietly that she did this to herself and she deserves to be forgotten about after all she has done to the people she has hurt to try and have a voice against the fighting.

She doesn’t even bother to deny that they may well be right.

0

Then one day something strange happens in the prison. She had been in the main office earlier thanks to the help of another prisoner - a Rebel she had learned - who had let themselves be caught for information gathering on the rumor of a Jedi being held in the prison and found her instead. She is not a Jedi thank you very much and hasn’t been one for a very long time. Regardless of her quietly protesting that the strange woman had given her a data file to hide in her clothes before the guards had come for them, killing the stranger and putting her back in the dark little cell. 

Hours later she’s stumbling back out of her dark little hole into a bright world of chaos and fighting with prison alarms blaring. Barriss stumbles into a wall and leans against it as she opens herself to the thrumming beat of the Force for the first time in years.

Only two of the people there fighting with the prison guards is strong in the Force. But she doesn’t recognize one of the two presences - the younger Force presence feels newer, feral, stronger, and so much anger just simmering under the surface of flimsy barriers that it nearly takes her breath away. The other one… is very startlingly familiar and so very bright in the Force that the darkness around her feels much less dark now than it had been feeling since the betrayal and following decimation of the Jedi Order.

She comes around a corner and nearly gets gutted by the vibroblade in the hands of a young soldier who was apparently with younger Force user. The young men both squint at her suspiciously for a few moments too long before one of them finally speaks.

“Are you the one that we came looking for?” The young soldier asks and she shrugs one shoulder slightly, watching the nervous twitches of the blade user.

“I don’t know. A woman came here looking for information and gave it to me before the guards found us. They killed her so I assume I’m supposed to give it to you or your leaders.” Barriss calmly.

“Well -”

The unknown Force user nudges his companion into silence before he speaks. It is rather easy to see that he doesn’t quite trust her yet.

“We don’t have time for this. She has the info we need and Ah - Fulcrum can deal with her once we’re back on the ship.”

The other younger man nods and they are off into the chaos of the fighting. Both of them carefully ushering her away from the worst of the small battle while keeping a close watch on her at all times. She suppresses a snort. It’s both endearing and rather annoying, because honestly it isn’t like she has anywhere else that she can go too besides that cell. No, she had destroyed that particular bridge a long time ago. 

Under a blaze of weapons fire, the three of them scramble up the boarding ramp and into the ship. After a few moments of breathing heavily, the young Force user coughs once before he straightens and gestures for her to follow him.

“C’mon Ah - Fulcrum will probably want to meet you and see what the data is that you claim to have.”

“Very well.”

He turns once to face as her as they are walking down to the hallway.

“I’ll only say this once. If you hurt my friends, I’ll gut you and make sure no one can find the remains.”

“Understood.”

He opens his mouth to likely threaten her more, but another voice cuts in and she’s grateful for the interruption. The older voice is like a soothing balm against the quiet darkness that burns within her soul.

“Bridger, what do you have - Barriss? Is that you?”

Barriss looks away from the boy - Bridger - and she sees her once dearest friend for the first time in what feels like decades. 

In the blink of an eye, she notes distantly that they suddenly much closer to each other and she is holding one of Ahsoka’s hands in her own. Even though Barriss knows in some part of her mind that she likely no longer has the right to touch Ahsoka, after so long alone in the dark she finds that she craves the simple contact.

“Hello, Ahsoka.”

Ahsoka looks much older and harder than Barriss last remembers her appearance. Though the last time she had seen Ahsoka was in the courtroom when Barriss’s betrayal had been brought to light before all. How small, lost, and alone the Togruta Jedi had looked back then.

Barriss doesn’t see any of that girl in the woman standing in front of her and in glancing over Ahsoka’s shoulder she most definitely recognizes the tan, white-bearded man that has been staring hard at her since becoming aware that she was on the ship. There is no doubt in her mind that Bridger wouldn’t have a chance to go through with his threat against Barriss if she made a move against them. Most likely because Captain Rex would get to her first in defense of everyone.

A small knowing smile appears on Ahsoka’s calm, weathered face.

“We should probably take some time to talk alone, you and I.”

Barriss smiles unsteadily and tilts her face towards the floor.

“Indeed.”

 

“So. Fulcrum?” 

“A cover name of sorts. And a long story that we might have some time to go over, given our current flight path.” Ahsoka shrugs at the question as she glances at the flight controls of the ship.

“I would be interested in hearing it,” Barriss says softly into the silence between them and listens to Ahsoka chuckle. After her time alone in the prison cell, she’s most interested to hear about the current events in the looming galaxy and what Ahsoka has been up too.

“Will you stay?” The unspoken question of _‘will you help us?’_ while not asked is not easily missed though either while she can see it in Ahsoka’s careful gaze. After all, that has happened following her betrayal so long, there’s so much that she will need to do to repair their bonds and to gain back Ahsoka’s trust in her. It isn’t immediate forgiveness for what she did, but Barriss hopes that Ahsoka eventually will in time. Oddly enough, she is actually rather grateful to have the chance. Barriss glances downward at the data chip in her right hand as she makes her decision and meets Ahsoka’s gaze.

She nods once.

“I will.”


End file.
